Americans are buying fewer new cars and factories in the U.S. are producing fewer cars. Uber, Lyft and the likes to blame? We will come to that but first output for new cars in the U.S. is close to a 43-year low.
And a chart on spend on new cars,
And today, Nissan Motor, Japan’s 2nd largest auto maker announced that it is slashing vehicle by 20% in North America to cope with falling profitability in the United States.
This follows an announcement from Ford in April that the only passenger car models it plans to keep on the market in North America will be the Mustang and the upcoming Ford Focus Active, a crossover-like hatchback that’s slated to debut in 2019. The Fiesta, Taurus, Fusion and the regular Focus will all disappear in the United States and Canada.
Ford estimates that by 2020 almost 90% of the Ford portfolio in North America will be trucks, utilities and commercial vehicles.
General Motors car sales in the U.S. plunged 20% in 2017. It has decided to scale back production of the Chevy Cruze, Chevy Impala, Buick LaCrosse and the Cadillac ATS and CTS.
Fiat Chrysler did away with the Dodge Dart and Chrysler 200 more than a year ago.
Car output is falling but at the same time truck (includes SUVs) output is increasing.
Americans aren’t buy fewer cars because of Uber or Lyft, they are simply buying more SUVs.
The overall spend on vehicles (new and used; cars and trucks including SUVs) isn’t growing at the rate it used to though. Americans are holding on to their vehicles for longer. Could be economic conditions causing that or could be that newer vehicles are not as reliable as older ones or could be an unknown future fossil fuel strategy.
